Media Advisory- For Immediate Release Creating Success: Feature Film Writing in Montreal Montreal – March 3, 2010 – Media@McGill and the Writers Guild of Canada are pleased to present a panel of accomplished English-language feature-film writers on Friday, March 26, 2010, from 6:30 to 8:30pm in room 232 of the Leacock Building at McGill University. The past year has seen the work of several Montreal feature writers achieve strong success, from international acclaim and distribution deals to festival awards. Our four panelists will talk about the realities of being a feature writer living in Quebec and Canada. They will discuss craft, financing, festivals, distribution and their favourite films. When: Friday, March 26, 2010 from 6:30 to 8:30pm Where: Room 232 of the Leacock Building at McGill University Who: Steve Galluccio (Mambo Italiano) Mark A. Krupa (The Wild Hunt) Doug Taylor (Splice) Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky) To attend, please RSVP to [email protected]. For media inquiries, contact David Kinahan, Director of Communcations, WGC. Panelist Bios: Jacob Tierney has worked as a professional actor since the age of six. Jacob launched his directorial career in 2002 with the comedic short film Dad. Dad won the honourable mention for Best Short at the 2002 Atlantic and Austin Film Festivals, and screened at the CFC’s Worldwide Short Film Festival. His feature debut Twist, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, received several Genie nominations, including a nod for Jacob’s screenplay, and won the Genie for Best Original Song. His second feature, the festival hit The Trotsky, won audience awards at the Atlantic and Tokyo Film Festivals after premiering to a full house and rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Trotsky will be released across Canada on May 14th through Alliance Films. His directorial follow-up to The Trotsky, the dark comedy Notre Dame de Grace, will be released in fall 2010. Doug Taylor Doug Taylor is a Montreal-based television and feature film screenwriter. After graduating with a B.F.A. from Concordia University’s Filmmaking dept., Doug became involved as a writer on a number of varied projects including director David Wellington’s debut feature film The Carpenter. His television experience includes The Atwood Stories (W Network) and Naked Josh (Showcase). Doug has also developed several MOW scripts. Doug’s most recently produced feature film credits include In the Name of the King (2007), They Wait (2008), and the soon-to-be released Splice starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, directed by Vincenzo Natali (Cube) and executive- produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hobbit). Doug is currently developing the HBO Canada series Playthings with Katherine Schlemmer and Mark McKinney, as well as a Canadian/Finnish thriller feature: HUMAN. He is also writing and co-producing an adaptation of the novel Godblog by Laurie Channer. Doug continues to endure the trauma of Quebec winters. Mark A. Krupa In addition to acting for TV and film, Mark has been an outdoor writer and photographer for the past 20 years. He writes and hosts Hooked with Mark Krupa which airs internationally and is in pre-production for season 2. He is also the host of Zooville, a kids’ series into its second season on SRC. Recently, Mark spearheaded the feature film The Wild Hunt, on which he served as co- executive producer, writer, and actor. Directed by Alexandre Franchi, the film won Best First Canadian Feature at TIFF 2009 and the audience award for Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance 2010. Steve Galluccio Steve Galluccio started his career in the Montreal underground theatre scene in 1990. He burst into the mainstream with Mambo Italiano, one of the most successful plays in Canadian theatre history. The play was turned into a movie which became an international hit, and sold in more than 53 countries (including the U.S.). Galluccio followed Mambo with the Gemini-award winning TV series Ciao Bella. Ciao Bella was also broadcast in Europe and the United States. Galluccio’s second feature film, Surviving My Mother, won the audience favourite award at the Montreal Film Festival, and was featured in many prestigious film festivals all over the world. Galluccio’s third feature, the bilingual Funkytown, will open in December 2010. Media@McGill is a hub of research, scholarship and public outreach on issues and controversies in media, technology and culture. The membersof Media@McGill are the eight communication studies faculty within theDepartment of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal. The Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) represents 2,000 professional screenwriters working in English across Canada. These are the talented people who create the distinctly Canadian entertainment we enjoy on our televisions, movie screens, radios and computers. .